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This program has been a long time in the making but I am so proud of what we've ultimately created here in collaboration with Alex Walker's Serian Camps. As you can see from the brochure below, these educational safaris are intended to provide a deeply immersive safari experience to middle and high school kids. In addition to young people from the rest of the world, we're also working hard to attract 12-18 year old youngsters from Asia - with the hope that after they have lived through an incredibly interactive and engaging experience in that ultimate classroom - the Masai Mara - they will go home with a deeper appreciation of wildlife and begin the long task of changing & challenging deep-rooted traditions and mindsets in their own communities.
Each cohort at the camp is designed to have 18 participants, divided into 3 groups of 6 and the best case scenario for us would be groups of kids from different continents attending camp simultaneously for a truly enriching & global experience.
Alex & Robyn at Serian were hugely supportive of this idea when we floated it to them and have offered their facilities (Serian Main Camp) and expertise to us at extremely discounted rates. Smita (my sister & partner at Chalo Africa, who was a science teacher & school head before we started CA) identified the core curriculum areas of the program and the Serian guide trainers then designed the safari along the lines of a simplified version of the FGASA. It's a lot of serious conservation education disguised as a lot of fun.
Thank you @@Tom Kellie for your many insights into Asia and for introducing us to your ex-student Wenhui Qiu, a graduate of the prestigious Peking University, who also holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Education from the University of Oregon at Eugene (how serendipitous was that?). Wenhui is now on board helping Chalo Africa with this program & this will be his baby to launch in the Chinese speaking world in the months to come. Wenhui speaks fluent English and is passionate about both conservation & education - he will accompany each of the Asian school groups and be the perfect intermediary between the English speaking guides and the Mandarin-Chinese speaking children. He tells me that he has also joined ST. Nihao to Safaritalk @@Vanfei - & we look forward to reading your updates on this and other wildlife/wilderness news from China.
If there are any teachers out there (@@Nature Traveler - calling you) or Scout leaders or Youth League people or others in charge of youth organizations or groups who are reading this & who would like their groups to participate in this program, please PM me and I'll send you all the info you require. As a SafariTalker, you already know that your children could not be in more capable hands than Serian's.
For your reading pleasure, here is a brochure version of the program in English & Simplified Mandarin Chinese.
@@Tom Kellie - could you please clone Wenhui into Vietnamese for me?
And as always, thank you so much Hari (@madaboutcheetah), for the use of your fabulous cheetah photo (our cover photo for 2015).
Sangeeta